Posted on 11/13/2001 12:10:56 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator
I do not post these musings of mine to be disagreeable or provocative, but I simply do not understand the consistent inconsistencies of "palaeo"conservatives. And I am not referring to their position on Communist Arabs vis a vis their position on every other Communist in the world. I am referring to something far more basic.
I do not understand someone calling himself a "palaeo"conservative who then invokes "liberty," "rights," etc., for the very simple reason that "palaeo"conservatism connotes a European-style conservatism that opposes these very things in the name of Throne and Altar. So why do our disciples of Joseph de la Maistre pose as followers of Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, or Friedrich von Hayek?
I don't know. Honestly. I'm asking.
True, Charley Reese and Joseph Sobran (unlike their more honest and consistent fellow, Pat Buchanan) pose as across-the-board individualist Jeffersonian ideologues. But truly consistern libertarians, even the most "rightwing," took positions on civil rights and the new left in the Sixties that were (and are) anathema to some of these fellow travellers. I recently went to a libertarian site (this one here) where I was impressed with the fearless consistency of a true libertarian, such as Rothbard. I urge interested parties to read some of Rothbard's writings here (particularly "Liberty and the New Left") and honestly ask themselves if they can imagine "libertarians" like Sobran or Reese (or their supporters here at FR) saying such things.
Imagine, for example, the following quotation from Rothbard, from the article just cited:
It is no wonder then that, confronted by the spectre of this Leviathan, many people devoted to the liberty of the individual turned to the Right-wing, which seemed to offer a groundwork for saving the individual from this burgeoning morass. But the Right-wing, by embracing American militarism and imperialism, as well as police brutality against the Negro people, faced the most vital issues of our time . . . and came down squarely on the side of the State and agaisnt the person. The torch of liberty against the Establishment passed therefore to the New Left.
Okay, the militarism/imperialism quote is right in character, but can you honestly imagine Sobran saying such things about "police brutality against the Negro people" or heaping such praises on the New Left in an address before Mississippi's "Council of Conservative Citizens?" Or Reese saying such things before a League of the South convention???
Something doesn't fit here.
The thing is, the "palaeo"right has roots going back to the turn-of-the-century European right (eg, Action Francaise) as well as to the Austrian school of economics. In fact, sometimes these roots jump out from the midst of libertarian rhetoric--for example, when someone stops thumping the First Amendment long enough to bemoan the subversive, rootless, cosmopolitan nature of international capitalism (and surely no one expects libertarian Austrian economics to create a Pat Buchanan-style monocultural country!), or to defend Salazar Portugal or Vichy France.
In short, what we are faced with here is the same situation as on the Left, where unwashed, undisciplined, excrement-throwing hippies rioted in favor of the ultra-orderly goose-stepping military dictatorships in Cuba and Vietnam. In each case--Left and Right--the American section advocated positions that the mother movement in the mother country would not tolerate. For one thing, Communist countries exploit and use totalitarian patriotism; no one in Cuba burns the Cuban flag and gets away with it, I guarantee. Yet partisans of nationalist-communist Cuba advocate the "right" of Americans to burn their national flag. And can anyone imagine what Franco or Salazar would have done to some dissident spouting Rothbard's rhetoric back in Iberia in the 1950's or 60's? Yet once again, a philosophy alien to the mother country is seized upon by native Falangists as the essence of the movement.
I don't get it. Palaeos, like Leftists, don't seem to be able to make up their minds. Are they in favor of or opposed to "rights liberalism?" Do they dream of a reborn medieval European chr*stendom, or a reborn early-federal-period enlightenment/Masonic United States of America? Do they want a virtually nonexistent government or something like the strong, paternalistic governments of Franco, Salazar, and Petain that will preserve the purity of the ethnoculture? Or they for or against free trade? (It is forgotten by today's Buchananite Confederacy-partisans that "free trade" was one of the doctrines most dear to the real Confederacy.) Are you for Jeffersonial localism or against it when a Hispanic border town votes to make Spanish (the language of Franco!) its official language?
I wonder if I could possibly be more confused than you yourselves seem to be.
Honestly, it does sometimes seem that the issue that defines "palaeo"ism is hostility to Israel. Why else would someone like "Gecko," a FReeper who openly admired 19th Century German "conservatism," which he admitted was a form of state socialism, be considered a member of the family by "disciples of Ludwig von Mises?" None of this makes any sense at all.
As a final postscript, I must add once more that I am myself a "palaeo" in all my instincts (except that I don't go around advocating a Biblical Theocracy for Israel and a Masonic republic for the United States, nor do I brandish the Bill of Rights like an ACLU lawyer). Whatever the intrinsic opposition between palaeoconservatism (at least of the more honest de la Maistre variety) and a reborn Halakhic Torah state based on the Throne and Altar in Jerusalem, I have never been able to discover them. I guess the rest of you know something I don't (although it sure as heck ain't the Bible). If there is some law requiring "true" palaeoconservatism to be based on European idealist philosophy, Hellenistic philosophy, or Austrian libertarian economics rather than the Divinely-Dictated Word of the Creator, I would like to hear about it. All I know is the rest of you "palaeos" seem to take hostility to Judaism (not just Zionism and Israel but Judaism itself) as a given for anyone who wants to be a member of the "club." And you seem to have a mutual agreement to act as though Biblical Fundamentalist Zionism didn't exist and that all sympathy for Israel originated in the philosophy of former Trotskyist/globalist/capitalist/neoconservatism (which is confusing because according to libertarianism capitalism is good). I have moreover learned from past experience that if I question any of you about your position on the Bible you ignore it with a smirk I can practically feel coming out of the monitor.
My attitude is as follows: for true libertarians who are actually sincere and consistent I have a deep respect, even though I disagree with you philosophy. For people who insist that one should be required to oppose the existence of a Jewish State on the ancient 'Eretz Yisra'el in order to even consider himself a conservative, you can all boil in hot excrement, since I have no desire to belong to your loathsome `Amaleq-spawned society. I simply wish I could understand why conservatism--which to me has always meant an acknowledgement of the Jewish G-d and His Word--has spawned so many people whose fundamental outlook is so diametrically opposed to this.
At any rate, while I do not expect any other than taunting, smart-aleck replies, I will most assuredly listen with an open mind to any explanation of the otherwise inexplicable Franco/Ayn Rand connection.
Jews could compete for any school, for any job. Hell, they could stay in any hotel.
England too long ago.
Frank too Southern
Crown Heights too black
Shooting a day care center in LA, or Jews going to worship in the Midwest, too demented.
It's all a figment of our imagination.
Well, you were speaking of the English-speaking people. Most certainly, Crown Heights belongs to that realm.
One of the rules of "civil discourse" is that racism is allowable on the part of blacks.
The civility of discourse refers to its form. You are absolutely correct that racism is appalingly tolerated in the media and elites --- due to the moral relativism and the multi-culturalism prevalent there, I would add --- for some groups and not others. This fact, however true, is the substance of discourse, not form.
It is also allowable to be anti-Christian but not anti-Judism.
You said it, not I. I am equally appaled and disgusted by both.
You obviously have a severe case. Get yourself some help before it becomes terminal.
In intellectual life, Jews have been brilliantly subversive of the cultures of the natives they have lived amongst. Their tendencies, especially in modern times, have been radical and nihilistic. One thinks of Marx, Freud, and many other shapers of modern thought and authors of reductionist ideologies. Even Einstein, the greatest of Jewish scientists, was, unlike Sir Isaac Newton, no mere contemplator of nature’s laws; he helped inspire [ what does that mean?] the development of nuclear weapons and consistently defended the Soviet Union under Stalin [absolute falsehood: Stalin hated him, and Einstein, incidentally, knew that].
So, instead of thanking Einstein for writing that famous letter to the President and helping us to win the war ---- Einstein's only contribution to the Manhattan project --- he blames him for that?
Incidentally, why omit the most major case of "subversive" activity in the form of starting a new religion --- that of Jesus Christ. Thank G-d he forgives that one Jew for the sins of "subversion." Of course he would much prefer if Jesus were Teutonic --- a Goth, say, or at least a Burgundian.
Now I am a victim of being misunderstood. Or maybe you're the victim of an unfortunate debilitation.
When you start picking over the whole history of the human race in order to find reasons to justifying your bullying, it's proof that that is precisely what it is. The real anti-semitism found in elements of the black community is ignored while you pick on fools.
And here it seems I am going to do it again.
One more time- fool- Irving was the Plaintiff.
The point that the world had just come out of two centuries of religious wars didn't count?
The point that declaring a national religion would automatically ally the country with some nations and make an enemy of other nations didn't count?
The point that they were Unitarians didn't count?
Go do a web search on the Treaty of Tripoli, while I search on the Illuminati.
The Talmud ofter uses the word "Edom" (the Biblical nation descended from Esau) when they are referring to the Roman Empire. Some students of the Talmud, including ZC, believe this was meant literally-- that the Romans were descended from Edomites. Others (and I, though certainly no Talmudic scholar, am of this view) think the Rabbis were merely trying to avoid Roman censorship, by substituting the name of a historical enemy of the Israelites for the name of their then-current oppressors.
Thank you, wideawake. I understand that part. What I don't understand is how that meshes with radical individualistic libertarianism. Is it perhaps that some palaeos advocate a radical individualism within a given ethnoculture, but become collectivists "at the water's edge," so to speak?
What do you make of Rothbard's comments on police brutality against "the Negro people" and his praise of the New Left?
P.S.: I agree that Franco was immeasurably better than any puppet of Stalin's.
This is traditional Jewish doctrine, and the fact that it is not known is symptomatic of the ignorance of true Judaism among people today.
The Romans themselves held that they came from the east. Their own mythology had them as the descendants of Trojan survivors of the Trojan war. Interestingly, the symbolism of Fascist Italy was based on this myth. For example, the uniform of the Blackshirts included the fez, and the Fascist war cry ("Aya! Aya! Alala!" or something like that) was supposedly the war cry of the ancient Trojans. (It was not Mussolini, btw, but the poet Gabriele d'Annunzio, who dreamed up this uniform and ritual.)
In Jewish history there are several exiles: the exile of Egypt (in the days of Moses), the exile of Assyria, the exile of Babylon, the exile of Persia, the exile of Greece, and the exile of 'Edom. This last exile, which endures until this day, was the exile brought about by the Romans. As 'Edom was the literal ancestor of the original Romans, it has become a sort of codeword for the western chr*stian world that succeeded it.
I found it a bit unsettling that I, as a Gentile Christian, would be likened to Esau and Amalek. It seemed rather insulting, like calling Jews the seed of satan.
Well, considering that there are sects of Christianity which claim that the House of Judah is over and done with, and Christians have an exclusive birthright claim, somebody may have a point. If true, then the apostates are destined to sell their birthright to Jacob anyway, lol.
Once again, this clashes with the constant "liberty, liberty, liberty" cry of palaeoright libertarians, as you yourself recognize. As to being a specific nation of a specific people, I have no objection. The only things are that this kind of got knocked in the head in the 17th Century when the first Africans were brought here, and that we ourselves are recent arrivals. This does not make our place here illigitimate, as everyone comes from somewhere else (even the Irish had to come to Ireland and the Japanese displaced the Ainu), but even Francis Parker Yockey in his national socialist "classic" Imperium noted that North America is not the natural home of Europeans, and that by coming here they cut themselves off from their roots.
As to why some paleos are critical of Zionism, one obvious place to start is that they feel that the conservative establishment has distorted the situation to lead the following around by the nose. Another is that they don't feel that that area is any business of ours.
As you well know, this is not the true reason, otherwise the palaeos would be opposed to intervention anywhere or alliances with anyone. Only Israel is deemed by them as contrary to American interests and "none of our business." (Where is your Biblical sentimentalism, btw? Did you trade it for a sentimentalism for medieval Europe or early federal America?)
And this brings us again to an interesting contradiction. Often the very palaeos who oppose universalism and egalitarianism, and who scream their lungs out for particularity and hierarchy, are the very ones who scream about "Jewish supremacy" and "apartheid" in Israel. Now I wonder where all that partucularity and hiearchialism goes to when Jews come into the picture? Whence comes this dedication to Jacobinism when Jewish nationalism is the object in view? I don't get it. Unless . . . there are some paleaos who are actually so screwed up in their thinking that they believe Jewish supremacy and egalitarianism among everyone else is actually linked. Garm! That would make the destruction of Jewish supremacy and nationalism (such as by supporting egalitarian Arab and Jewish leftists in Israel) a paramount measure to restore hiearchy and particularity to the rest of the world.
Anyone out there honest enough to admit he believes that?
Hmmm. One G-d creates all people from one original man and woman. This G-d then sovereignly chooses one particular people from this family.
That would never happen . . . would it??? [/Sarcasm]
Oh, come now. You are no such thing. You consistently refused to answer any straight question I gave you, I'm sure because you think it great fun to torment simple Fundamentalist Bible thumpers with the "only Jewish neoconservatives support Israel" line. You know . . . Jerry Falwellstein, Pat Robertsonberg, John Haggiman, and of course, that latest addition to the family of "ex Trotskyite Jewish neoconservatives," Jesse Helmsowitz. Sorry you lost that guy. Which globalist neoconservative got to him to change his views, hmmm?
His verbose navel gazing is simpy a subterfuge. His real agenda is to duke it out with anyone who disagrees with a Zionist-pleasing foreign policy.
I was here before you were, Texy boy. I'm here because I got my fingers burned twenty years ago when I joined a conservative organization assuming that conservatism supported Israel and running headlong into hypocritical Rapture Cult/reconstructionism. I felt betrayed and stabbed in the back by "my" movement. And people like you still think you own it. At least Chuck Carlson and Gary North admit that a philosemitic Biblical Fundamentalism exists in this country. You like to pretend otherwise because you get some sort of pleasure from it.
No need to ask you for your side of the story in an honest fashion, because to do so would spoil your fun. I can only wonder what motivates a common thief like you, who receives his every breath and heartbeat from the Jewish G-d and then hates Him for it.
And as for verbose, have you ever used a small word when a larger one would do? I think I recall your paraphrasing the Jewish Book of Genesis a while back, careful not to mention or quote it directly. Do you have to derive every value you have from someone else?
`Esav sanei' 'et Ya`aqov. And Esau is a parasite.
Wow! You mean you admit it??? Tex-oma won't like that.
What O what is the conservative movement going to do about those horrible millenial chr*stians? Maybe you should huddle with the ACLU and the ADL and come up with something.
"Paleoconservatism" can be given any of at least three meanings. The first refers to that European conservatism along the "throne and altar" lines outlined by de Maistre. Since Frederick Wilhelmsen and the elder Brent Bozell died, I don't know of anyone who supports this view. Conservative Catholics are in the main not at all of this stripe. They respect the American culture and polity which raised them, though they take issue with some of the Supreme Court's usurpations in recent years. This is hardly a "protective coloration" for some other ideology, as has been said here by some. The second meaning is the one I mentioned and that has to do with going back to the founders. One may differ on just how one interprets the founders. The third meaning is more specialized and has to do with getting back to a "libertarian" and non-interventionist right that was presumed to have existed before William F. Buckley put the conservative movement on more Anti-communist and ultimately statist lines. If you want to talk intelligently about "paleoconservatism" you should not willfully mix up the three strains.
There are real differences between, say Samuel Francis, Lew Rockwell and the late M.E. Bradford. None of them would count as an admirer of Ayn Rand -- though Rockwell might flirt with Randians. None of them would advocate Franco as a serious model for American conservatives -- though given a choice in 1930s Spain between Franco and Stalinism some may have chosen the former, just as the New York Times would have chosen the latter.
To my way of thinking, Rockwellism is a pretty unstable mix of contradictory elements, but the disagreements between various paleo groups are simply a continuation of the disagreements which the previous generation of conservatives had amongst themselves. If you are really interested in answering this question you might look at the histories of the conservative movement, rather than presume that you have discovered something new and damning.
Most of the paleos are as critical of interventions elsewhere as they are in the Middle East. Look, for example, at some of the responses to the Serbian adventure. But they do recognize that we are disengaging from some areas of the world, such as Central America or the Far East, and becoming ever more involved in the Middle East. Also, I suspect that too much talk of "Amalek" and "Esau" turns people off. If you want to create your radically particularist Jewish state, fine, but don't expect Americans to follow you as you become ever more extreme. That is inherent in such radical particularism. Pursue it far enough and those who don't belong to the group can't follow you. Saying that America is a particular state or nation for a particular people doesn't necessarily imply racial or religious homogeneity. It means that one shouldn't overload assimilative processes or force things to the breaking point.
Now perhaps you can explain the bizarre combination under the Zionist banner of people like the Randian Peikoff, the liberal Martin Peretz, and the extremist Kahane. So many groups from socialists, anarchists and communists to fascists and religious totalitarians have gathered under that flag as well. You have some explaining of your own to do. You see, that's a game that any number can play.
Now you're running into another probled with palaeoconservatism! Because palaeos insist on the Jeffersonian interpretation of the Constitution, while the Founders who opposed Your Foul Conspiracy were all implied powers, loose-constructionist, central bank advocates.
So was Jefferson the bad guy, or was it Hamilton with his e--vil alliance with The Money Power???
There are many schools of thought among Jews-- even among Orthodox Jews-- on many issues. My father, alav hashalom, was devoutly Orthodox but harshly criticized both Hassidim and Kabbalists for beliefs which he considered un-Jewish.
Yes, there are some anti-Christian statements in the Talmud, but understanding them requires a brief lecture on Talmud: The Talmud contains two types of material, halacha and hagaddah. Halacha is the rules-- is a particular animal kosher or non-kosher, is a particular act forbidden or permitted on the Sabbath, is killing someone under particular circumstances murder or self-defense-- and, on those issues, the Talmud comes to a conclusion: different opinions are debated, but eventually a consensus is reached or a vote taken, and a rule is set down. These rules are considered binding by Orthodox Jews, and of persuasive force by Conservative and, to a lesser extent, Reform Jews.
On matters of hagaddah, in contrast-- that is, matters of doctrine, history, folklore or other types of belief-- no conclusions are drawn in the Talmud; everything someone says is that one rabbi's opinion. Where two or more opinions conflict, all are stated, and none is authoritative.
The Talmud has a handful of anti-Christian (and more than a handful of anti-Roman) statements; all the anti-Christian remarks were made in times and places where the Jews were being persecuted by the Christian authorities. Some Jews today continue to quote these anti-Christian remarks; most do not hold any such beliefs.
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